Identification of transient road obstacle distributions and their impact on vehicle durability and driver comfort

This paper presents methods that enable identification of the distribution of transient obstacles in a set of public roads. The roads are considered as non-stationary random profiles with superimposed transients of varying depths or heights and lengths. The transient obstacles are detected from both road profiles and vehicle responses by use of wavelet analysis. The impact of the identified distributions on vehicle durability and driver comfort shows a clear potential for differentiating the designs for different road conditions.